The Crystal BucketTelevision criticism from the Observer 1976-79Clive James
1981

Cover photograph by Peter Williams

Dustjacket synopsis:
"'His contribution to the art and enjoyment of TV criticism over the past ten years has been immense. His work is
deeply perceptive, often outrageously funny and always compulsively readable'.

"Thus the judges of the British Press Awards, in naming Clive James Critic of the Year for 1981. The Crystal Bucket
offers a further selection of his inimitable 'visions before midnight...'"

Quotes:
"C.J. didn't get where he is today just by being funny. He is humane, liberal and compassionate...What he
writes is always pertinent and always witty...We owe him a deep debt of gratitude" - Gavin Ewart, The Listener
"Few critics have a more unerring ear for woolliness and doubletalk or a more scathing and entertaining way of
dealing with it" - Lesley Garner, Good Housekeeping
"He is one of the most remarkable figures in British cultural life at the moment: a poet and gifted literary critic
who is also genuinely liked by the mass audience" - Michael Mason, London Review of Books
"One of the few columnists who makes you laugh aloud...if there were angels he would be on their side: and that would
certainly include Charlie's angels" - Melvyn Bragg, Sunday Times

This book continues the story which I started to tell in Visions Before Midnight, a volume selected from my
Observer television column between the years 1972 and 1976. In this second instalment I try to cover the years
1976-1979, but once again the story is patchy. There is no hope of telling it all, or even of outlining all the reasons
why this should be so. Enough to say that British televsion remains too various to be fully absorbed by one mind, even
when that mind is well accustomed to being bombarded by patterns of light and sound for the better part of every day.
All politico-sociological or sociologico-political surveys of British televsion can safely be dismissed as moonshine. In
America there might be some chance of summing up what the networks crank out, but in Britain your chance to draw fully
abreast of what the BBC has on offer is when ITV goes on strike, and vice versa. Far from being a conspiracy to
manipulate the public, British television is an expanding labyrinth which Daedalus has long since forgotten he ever
designed.

From the Picador paperback edition, 1982.

Notes:
The title of the collection comes from the following poem:

And by the happie blisfull way
More peaceful Pilgrims I shall see,
That haue shooke their gownes of clay,
And goe appareld fresh like mee.
Ile bring them first
To slake their thirst,
And then to taste those Nectar suckets
At the cleare wells
Where sweetnes dwells,
Drawne up by Saints in Christall buckets.